NEW at GoSee is ILAN HAMRA, photographer and visual artist from Hamburg. Ilan studied photography at the Lette Verein school of applied arts and has been a freelance photographer since 2006, but is also an experienced CGI and post artist.
Here on GoSee, we present you his print and city-light film campaign for the Dortmund CONCERT HALL, including the making-of film, realized by Ilan Hamra with the agency Leagas Delaney Hamburg. The campaign combines emotional film portraits with different 3D animations. One motif on the large city-light posters, for instance, shows the gripping image of a crying man with a photorealistic waterfall flowing out of his right eye. So, of course, GoSee had a few questions:
How are combined works like this created? How do you get someone to cry in front of the camera? And how do you ‘build’ a real flowing waterfall on his face with CGI?
“An essential part of my job has always also been the intensive work I do together with models – and that already begins during the casting phase. A total of six models were called for this motif, and I tried to outcry every one of them. It helps me to slip into the role played in front of the camera myself in order to achieve the emotional result I’m trying to get from the models. Leroy Joensson, who was chosen for the waterfall motif, had never played a role like it before and was surprised himself at how deeply he was able to become immersed in it.”
Before his career as a photographer, Ilan Hamra once went to acting school himself by the way… What happened after the successful casting? Could you please go through it for us step-by-step?
“While the backgrounds were being composited as high-res freeze frames, the perspective of the 3D animations had to be designed to match the footage from the tracking shots of the models. To achieve this, we worked in front of a green screen in my studio, while the background images were faded into the motif live. Wherever necessary, first pre-visualizations of the animations were loaded. To transfer the movement of the film camera to the CGI scenes, the camera movements were additionally tracked.”
For the waterfall motif, Ilan Hamra created a rough 3D model of the head and built the fine-grained water simulations on it according to the agency brief. During post-production in After Effects, he finally composited it all. As a photographer, he has a keen eye for lighting and composition, and his post-production is often the sensitive continuation of his creative process.
Since 2006, Ilan Hamra has been a professional member of the BFF (Association of Freelance Photographers and Film Creators). He studied 3D Design, with a main focus on Maya, and is trained in film post-production. This comprehensive skillset came into play in the elaborate production presented here. A total of four very different motifs were created, each requiring its own individual approach. Further motif variations and credits can be seen on Instagram and his website.
GoSee : instagram/hamra & ilanhamra.com